23 | March | 2011 | Tiny Cat Pants

So, I pulled all the short stuff–which nearly killed me three times. Then I cut down all the tiny trees. Then I went to Bates’ and picked up a yellow rose, six Tennessee Coneflowers, and a salvia of some sort.

The rose is in the corner, where it can just bake to its heart’s content and hopefully it will hit about three or four feet and be a big awesome circle of good-smellingness. The salvia is over by the sage and the coneflowers are interspersed between. Hopefully they’ll get enough sun in this garden to thrive. As I said, I’ve never managed happy coneflowers out back and I really love them. Hopefully trying them here will solve that. I’ve got something of a blueish theme going over there, which I hope will cause the yellow rose to really pop.

I have pictures, but I’m not sure I can raise my arms to reach the camera. Ooo, this will be unfun tomorrow.

Also, poor Butcher, you know he was hoping I’d stay home and clean the kitchen. I mean, I was kind of hoping I’d stay home and clean the kitchen, too, but we’re out of luck in that regard.

Oh, and Bates’ had wysteria–another plant I can’t figure out the right place in my yard for, but when I do? Oh, when I do I’m going to have the shit out of some of that.

This morning I had the kind of morning that makes me love Nashville. I went to get my oil changed and the guys at the shop were hilarious. Then they tried to get me to eat Burger King, but I declined, for butt reasons. But I told them about the Butcher’s plan to take his car to Williamson County and shoot it and they both got these grins and I was like “Oh my god! You think this is a good idea!” and the younger guy was all “Me and my brother are experimenting with making our own ballistics gel.”

Then I went to the car inspection place–8:30 in the morning on a Wednesday just past the middle of the month and I was the only one there. I was at first concerned that the apocalypse had happened between the garage and the car inspection place, but no, apparently I just hit on the sweet spot.

Then it was off to the County Clerk’s office, which is now downtown, in a building by the old Civil War hospital. I walked in and the security guard said “Take the elevator down to one and go to your right.”

I stopped short, having said nothing. And she laughed and laughed.

“I saw what was in your hands,” she explained. “But I do love to make people wonder if I’m psychic.”

And now I’m sitting here getting my morning blog on and feeling a little, just a little, guilty for taking a whole day off to do what I had done by 9:30, but people, never in the history of Nashville have those three tasks taken anything less than half a day.

So, I’m considering the front flowerbed instead. You’ll remember that it has been working as a half-hearted herb garden. The lavender is flourishing, the sage is slowly but surely doing its thing, and the rosemary is still trying to decide if it hates me. But everything that I’ve put in the middle of the garden had two strikes against it–1. It was too short. And 2. It didn’t grow fast enough to keep from getting tremendously weedy. And, since it was too short and didn’t look good, I lost the will to keep it from getting tremendously weedy, when it was just so much easier to weed the big garden where the cool flowers are.

It was all I could do to not go to Bates’ Nursery on my way home. But I thought, no I need to clean the bed out and have a good look at what I want in there. I like the lavender a great deal. I might need another one down in front. But I’d like something tall in the back. I’m almost… almost leaning towards a really bright yellow rose. My roses are all kind of a dark hot pink and, with the exception of the tea rose, they’re climbers. A yellow bushing rose would be striking with the red of the house and the purples and blues of the lavender and sage.

And, I’ll admit, I’m having such poor luck with coneflowers in the back bed, I think because they don’t get enough sun, that I’m thinking of putting coneflowers between the rose and the lavender.

But I’m concerned that they’re not taller than the lavender.

People, learn from me. Lavender should go in the back.

So, I might need something taller than the lavender. I don’t know what.